You can't even define fascism. I challenge Kamala to tell us what it is, because a majority of the country doesn't know the word. She needs non-college educated blacks, whites and Hispanics to turn out for her, and she is smearing her rival, as with a mid-20th century [00:00:19] European political philosophy. Okay, Jessica, I don't know what Hitler is. She's calling him a fascist. Go out on the street and ask 20 people what that means for Hitler. I will. I understand that we're all in our own head, and it's easy to assume that simply because we do not understand a thing that other people do not. [00:00:37] Jesse Watters I think you need to know your own limitations. Other people seem to have an idea of what it means. Do I think that people could explain it in a fully encompassing academic sense? Perhaps not, but I think people understand at least a little about it. And that's despite the fact that Fox News has had, as one of its [00:00:56] motivating drives from the very beginning, to take words that have a meaning and just make them mean whatever you want. Which is why you can come to a point where Donald Trump routinely calls Harris a fascist, which never seemed to bother Jesse Watters for some reason. But regardless of his concern about the educational attainment [00:01:14] of the average American, according to a new ABC news poll, almost half of Americans think that that label does apply to Donald Trump. 49% of registered voters in this survey say that Trump is a fascist. Here's the definition they provided. A political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights, [00:01:33] and threatens or use force, uses force against their opponents. I think that that's less than half of what it actually means, but it's true enough in its own way, and I think it's good enough for the purposes of this. And by the way, fewer than half as many 22% see Harris as a fascist by this definition. [00:01:50] And to those 22%. But please read a book. I'm begging you to read a book at this point, because that's insane. Call her a communist if you want. That's diluted too, but at least it's like in the right direction, I suppose. And in any event, the most important thing, perhaps other than the fact that half of America has been convinced [00:02:07] by a decade of Donald Trump to think that he's a fascist is that that survey was done before all the recent fascism thing. This is before the Kelly comments about Donald Trump pining for Hitler's generals and all of that. And it's even before Harris herself weighed in on this in clips like this quoted. [00:02:24] General Milley calling Donald Trump a fascist. You yourself have not used that word to describe him. Let me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump is a fascist? - Yes, I do. - Yes I do. And so, you know, those numbers perhaps could tick up in the wake of that. - But what do you think? - Yeah. [00:02:40] I mean, look, the brothers said that we should terminate the Constitution. He encouraged the riot against the Capitol. And then when he found out that they were trying to murder his vice president, he said he deserves it. He said that we should use the military to shoot protesters. [00:02:56] He says that there's an enemy from within, and we need to attack the Democrats and lock them up. What charges would you bring? And did they break any laws? Does it matter? We're locking them up. And so maybe he doesn't do those things. Cross your fingers. That he doesn't mean it when he says all those fascist things. [00:03:14] But if you ask me, what would a fascist say? Those are the things that I would pick. Right. And the only other thing that I could imagine, you know, given that the most famous fascists in human history were the Germans and they added the anti-Semitism, [00:03:30] maybe he, the fascist candidate, would also say things like, Jews have not been loyal enough to me. Oh, right. He said that too. Okay. So, I mean, I don't know what else is left. I mean, would it, if this isn't at least at a bare minimum, threatening to be a fascist, what is what would get you to say. [00:03:50] Oh, yeah. Okay, I see it. Like, would he have does he have to say I'd like to have my political opponents murdered? Would that be all right when Paul Pelosi almost was murdered by one of his fans? That's Nancy Pelosi's husband. He laughed about it and said, yeah, it was probably his gay lover. [00:04:09] If you laugh about how your political opponents husbands might be murdered, you might be a fascist. So there's a thousand reasons why. And and so the Republicans look, man, I talk to them all the time. There's a bunch of things that I agree with right wing populists on, [00:04:24] but I'm never going to agree to things that aren't true. And so if you're crying about, oh, no, I can't believe you're calling him a fascist when he's such a lovely, normal person. No, no. Hard. No. No way. He's not anywhere near normal. He's totally unhinged. [00:04:39] I'm happy to actually more agree with what the general direction of what Jesse Watters is saying, in the sense that I think people have come to understand, like fascist is like the worst version of whoever your opponent is, right? Like, we don't we don't rock with the right wingers. [00:04:57] And the worst version of that is now called fascist. I don't think it's tethered to any actual like definition. You know, that comes out of, you know, Mussolini's government or Adolf Hitler, right? Like a context after World War One where a bunch of these disaffected, [00:05:17] you know, PTSD addled, ex veterans were really angry and they were down with these fascist movements. Like, that's a big part of it. It's like a bunch of these guys went to war in Europe, for these [00:05:32] imperial powers, for absolutely nothing. They get back home and they're freaking destitute. And, you know, these strongmen come around and be like, yo, it's these people's faults. It's a xenophobic messaging. And they built a movement out of that. [00:05:49] I don't really think Donald Trump's thing is, like, correlated to that, but I think fascism, like woke, is just a descriptor now. It's not tethered to any like actual definable thing. Donald Trump, yes, he feels dictatorial. He feels authoritarian. [00:06:09] He feels pretty scary in those instincts, for sure. I don't know what makes him more fascist than, you know, some dictator in Nicaragua or Argentina or any other place. And we just never use those words for those people. [00:06:25] For whatever reason, we just seemed, you know, we seem satisfied to just call them right wing, sort of authoritarian dictators. I just don't feel married to the term fascist in terms of its description of Donald Trump. [00:06:40] I'm not really sure why we got to reach for it all the time, honestly. You know, I have an answer to that. It's because dictator wannabe is too long. Well, that's fair, right? - That is. - Fair. - It's tidier for sure. - Yeah. [00:06:56] I look, I don't expect that everyone is going to have gone to like, you know, grad school for poli sci or whatever. But as someone who did do that for a few years, I think I think was is right that I think a lot of people use it to mean I don't like this politician. It's why 1 in 5 Republicans can apply it to Kamala Harris in a way [00:07:14] that makes literally no sense whatsoever. At the same time, I think that it does make sense, and it doesn't make sense to apply it to Donald Trump because he is in all ways, exactly like Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. But when you look at the actual scholars of fascism from the last century, [00:07:31] they will give you a list of 6 to 12 characteristics of fascist movements, encompassing the relationship between the government and businesses, the hearkening back to a mythological earlier period in that nation's history, the trying to mobilize some sort of like prior masculinity, [00:07:48] the hyper focus on cleanliness and the demonization of sexual perversion. The, as you pointed out, the xenophobia and the constant focus on both outsiders as well as the enemies within that are taking down society. In some cases, it's supposed to be Jewish people. In some cases it's supposed to be gay people. [00:08:05] There's always a focus on that and the hyper veneration of the military. There are a lot of characteristics of this, and I don't think that Donald Trump has just happened into some of this. I think he has people like Stephen Miller who I think are very consciously they're going back and they're mining fascist speeches to give him new talking points. [00:08:23] I think that a lot of it does cross over. I don't think that most people need to think about literally any of this. I think it's a pretty pointless academic endeavor, but I can only speak for myself when I use the term. It's because I think it applies to him. It does not apply to plenty of politicians that I don't like. [00:08:39] I don't like Nikki Haley. I don't think she's a fascist, you know? And so, like, I didn't like Mitt Romney. I don't think he's a fascist. I think in this case, I think Donald Trump is trying as hard as he can to apply those characteristics to himself. And more importantly, I think, were you to list the different characteristics [00:08:56] of a fascist movement and present it to a Jesse Watters, I don't know that he'd have a problem with any of them. He doesn't like the term because we consider it bad, but I don't think he doesn't like the term because he doesn't like the movement. I just think he wants it to be rebranded as something else. - Yeah. - And trust me, they'll rebrand it. [00:09:12] Like, maybe like harkening back to an earlier time, like Make America Great Again or something like that. They'll probably something like that. All right. Look. Last things here. The problem that was, is pointing out is in some ways is the Democrats cried wolf [00:09:27] so many times on fascism that, you know, Bob Dole is not a fascist. Okay. So that when we actually got one, people don't quite believe it. And so that's a giant problem for the Democratic Party. But I agree with John. I think he matches that description to a T. That doesn't mean that [00:09:45] he's going to put people in gas chambers or that he already has. So when you think fascist, you think Nazi, you think gas chambers, right? So that's why people. Wow. That's super extreme. No. But before they got to the gas chambers, they took many, many, many steps. And these were kind of the steps they took. [00:10:01] And then finally, I got into social media, fight with Stephen Miller, the guy you mentioned. And, and he said, oh, you guys are in the party with Dick Cheney now. So, you know, you guys are pro-war. I said, okay, great. So are you going to promise that Donald Trump is not going [00:10:19] to back Israel's wars or pay for them? And he's like, well, you guys have Dick Cheney. No, no, no, that wasn't the question, brother. Are you going to back Israel's wars and are you going to pay for it? He's like, well, you weren't for peace. And Trump kept everything safe and the Middle East will be fine under us. [00:10:35] You didn't answer the question? No. Okay. Are you going to pay for Israel's wars and are you going to make us fight them? And there's a reason why he's not answering that question. So look, guys, they're not anti-war at all. They're very militaristic and and and often very proud of that. [00:10:51] So I think a lot but I think his base is anti-war. So I'm if he wins, I'm super curious what happens when some portions of his base realize, oh, he wasn't any of the things that we wished he was. And we did wish you know, like we just hoped that he [00:11:09] was these things that we are. Oh, but it turns out he's not. He's just a crook who'll do anything for donors and has obvious fascist tendencies. He didn't speak like a fascist because he was kidding. He spoke like a fascist because he is a fascist. Yeah, yeah. And remember, we already had four years with him. [00:11:25] He didn't start any new wars. He also inherited several and didn't get us out of any of them and escalated them during his term. And you're right, like I don't I don't think there's going to be gas chambers. He has promised massive concentration camps for migrants, though I may agree with was that I don't know how practical that actually is, but he's certainly [00:11:42] trying to use it to appeal to his base. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. [00:11:59] But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. Thank you.